毕业论文电子版.docx

1、毕业论文电子版IntroductionThe advertisement is a kind of linguistic art. Nowadays, advertisements can be found everywhere, which have become an inescapable part of our daily life. As a matter of fact, the advertisement is a kind of public activity, which means to inform somebody of something and catch his

2、attention. Advertisements intend to trigger a special response from the consumers; therefore they are loaded with great persuasive language. It is no exaggeration to say that our life is more or less influenced and even changed by so many advertisements around us in the modern society. A lot of adve

3、rtisements in the publication are competing for the audiences attention, and then the advertisers try to make their advertisements catch the audiences attention. However, sometimes smart advertisers use some concealed means or implication to control their true meanings. In order to realize the true

4、meanings of the advertisement, we must learn to utilize fully pragmatics. Pragmatic presupposition concerns about the speakers and the hearers, so does the advertisement. Therefore, pragmatic presupposition is a comprehensive means applied to the advertisements, which makes advertisements more conci

5、se, attractive and persuasive.1. An Introduction to Advertisements1.1 Definitions of Advertisements and Its ImportanceThe advertisement is one of the oldest forms of public announcements. Encyclopedia Britannia defines advertising as following: The techniques used to bring products, services，opinion

6、s or cause to public notice for the purpose of persuading the public to respond in a certain way towards what is advertised. Most advertising involves promoting goods that is for sale, but similar methods are used to encourage people to drive safely，to support various charities，or to vote for politi

7、cal candidates. In many countries advertising is the most important source of income for media (e.g. newspaper, magazines, or television stations) through which it is conducted, (Encyclopedia Britannia Dictionary，1985:96). As a matter of fact, the definitions of “advertisements” are many and varied.

8、 Among them, one of the both widely accepted and latest definitions is put forward by OGuinn,T.C. and Semenik,J.R.(1998.6) as “advertising is a paid ,mass-mediated attempt to persuade.”As we know, advertisements have become a part of our daily life and we are all exposed to various kinds of advertis

9、ementson radio and television, in newspapers and magazines, on city streets and buses, and even on computer screens and mobile phones. In todays age of mass production and fierce competition for markets, the advertisement has become an essential means for advertisers to make their products or servic

10、es publicly known and ultimately to move consumers to buy and keep buying their goods or services. National economy needs advertisements for its development. Enterprises need advertisements for competition. People generally need advertisements for help in choosing commodities and for the enrichment

11、of spiritual life. Therefore, it is no exaggeration to say that our life is more or less influenced and even changed by so many advertisements around us in the modern society.1.2 Purposes and Functions of AdvertisementsFrom the definition of advertisement we have mentioned above, we can learn the fu

12、nctions of advertisement: informing and persuading. By informing, advertisers want to communicate information about the products, its features, and its sale. By persuading, advertisers try to induce consumers to try new products. The ultimate goal of advertisement is to inform the potential consumer

13、s of the advertised products or services, and to persuade them to take purchase actions. Therefore, if advertisers succeed in providing a great deal of information about their products but fail to persuade anybody to buy the product, it is hard to say the advertisement is successful. Generally speak

14、ing, advertisers should let their advertisements conform following steps:Firstly, it is necessary to catch the audiences attention for a long time. Once the audiences attention has been captured, the advertisement must hold the audiences attention and convince him that the advertisement is particula

15、r. The successful advertisement should let the audiences have the desire to buy the products and persuade them that the products satisfy their needs or provide a need that they have not felt before. Moreover, the advertisements must let them know that the products advertised are better than other co

16、mpetitive products. If the advertisement is successful, it would promote the audiences to buy the products. Then, the audiences will take actions and buy the advertised products. Maybe they will buy the products in a short time or even a few years later. So, the more successful the advertisement is,

17、 the more possible the consumers will buy the advertised products. From the above discussion, we may make it clear that the purpose of all of the advertisements is the same: to persuade consumers to buy the products. In order to reach the purpose, the language of the advertisements must be persuasiv

18、e. All in all, the advertisers will use kinds of means to let consumers to accept their goods and services.1.3 Features of Advertisements In order to make clear how pragmatic presupposition works in advertising language, it is necessary to know something about the lexical, syntactical and rhetorical

19、 features of the language of advertisements.1.3.1 Lexical FeaturesThe language of advertisements has its own usage. The vivid and expressive spoken words are highly used in advertisements. Among these words, adjectives，verbs, compounds and derivatives all occur in high frequency. Some of them even h

20、ave been developed into typical advertisement-featured or stereotyped words. The advertisement copywriters tend to choose strongly positive adjectives, which are always linked to particular types of products. For example, food is always “delicious” “juicy” and so on. These adjectives often appear in

21、 advertisements in the form of the comparative or the superlative to show the superiority of the goals and services. In contrast, verbs in advertisements are used in the imperative form when we are told to do something, e.g.: “try” “See”1.3.2 Syntactical FeaturesGenerally speaking, the sentences of

22、advertisement are short and simple, because short and simple sentences are usually emphatic, expressive and have special clarities, that is, simple sentences are widely used; however the compound ones are not. Coordinate structures are better than subordinate structures. Imperative sentences are oft

23、en used rather than negative ones, and the present tense is dominant in the texts of the advertisements.1.3.3 Rhetorical FeaturesIn advertisements, the copywriters of advertisements adopt some rhetorical methods to make the advertisements more attractive, thus enabling the language of advertisements

24、 to be highly artful and loaded. Metaphor, simile, personification and repetition are frequently used to build up the expected effects; many advertisements tend to repeat words or ideas. For example, something repeated frequently is more likely to be remembered.2. An Introduction to Pragmatic Presup

25、positionFrom 1973, many works show that presuppositions are too sensitive to contextual factors (Levinson, 1997:177). Presuppositions are not inherent in particular lexical items or constructions, but associated with properties of utterances in a context. Semantics and semantic theories of presuppos

26、itions are theoretically inadequate to explain some language phenomena. Therefore, studies on presupposition from the pragmatic perspective have emerged. Pragmatic presupposition characterizes presupposition from the perspective of language use, and regards presupposition as a major factor of the co

27、ntext, belief and knowledge state of the speaker and hearer. From the pragmatic perspective, speakers have presuppositions.2.1 Definitions of Pragmatic PresuppositionPresupposition can be divided into two types: semantic and pragmatic presuppositions. The former is deduced from internal part of a se

28、ntence without any relation to the context. However, the latter concerns the factors about person and context in communications; it is the speakers presupposition. Although on basis of the meaning of the sentence and structure, pragmatic presupposition can only be deduced by combining with contexts.

29、 Therefore, semantic presupposition analyses the sentence from the aspect of logic semantics, which is a linguistic means of speakers to express the purpose of the utterances. It is a kind of presupposition in a narrow sense. While pragmatic presupposition analyzes sentences from pragmatics, which i

30、s a kind of presupposition in a broad sense. Pragmatic presupposition essentially studies the relationship between human beings and the propositions they make. It is also called pragmatic premise and used to refer to the assumption of the context in which the speaker makes an utterance, or it is tak

31、en as appropriate conditions necessary for the performances of speech act or the conditions that must be satisfied to make an utterance, it is taken as the mutual or background knowledge shared by both the speaker and the hearer.Since 1970s, many studies on presupposition from pragmatic aspect have

32、been made, which has led to varieties of definitions on pragmatic presuppositions. Stalnaker(1973)argues that presupposition is essentially a pragmatic phenomenon and is a part of the set of assumptions made by participants in a conversation, which he terms “the common ground”. This pragmatic view o

33、f presupposition is also proposed by such researchers as Sperber and Wilson(1986),who argues that presupposition is not an independent phenomenon but one of a series of effects is produced when the speaker employs syntactic structure and intention to show the hearer how the current sentence fits into the previous background. Pragmatic